If you have a large .pst or .ost file, you may experience application pauses while you perform typical operations in Outlook. These typical operations include reading email messages, moving email messages, and deleting email messages.

The following list summarizes expected behavior based on the size of your Outlook data file.

Up to 5 GB: This file size should provide a good user experience on most hardware.

Between 5 and 10 GB: This file size is typically hardware dependent. Therefore, if you have a fast hard disk and lots of RAM, your experience will be better. However, slower hard disk drives, such as drives that are typically found on portable computers or early-generation solid-state drives (SSDs), experience some application pauses when the drives respond.

More than 10 GB: When the .ost file reaches this size, short pauses begin to occur on most hardware.

Very large (25 GB or larger): An .ost file of this size increases the frequency of short pauses, especially while you are downloading new email messages. However, you can use Send/Receive groups to manually sync your mail. For more information about Send/Receive groups, see the “Are you synchronizing many RSS feeds?” section.

Loop detection – without STP

According to the documentation:

Loop protection provides protection against loops by transmitting loop protocol packets out of ports on which loop protection has been enabled. When the switch sends out a loop protocol packet and then receives the same packet on a port that has a receiver-action of send-disable configured, it shuts down the port from which the packet was sent.

So it’s not doing anything fancy – just using its own protocol packet to detect loops back to the switch itself. Note this is different to Cisco’s loopback detection, which will detect a switchport looped back on itself – e.g. due to faulty wiring – but will not detect a cable run from one port to another on the same switch. Configuration is quick and easy, and it seems to work well. It should work well in any situation where you have edge ports that users might connect together, possibly via a ‘dumb’ switch that doesn’t forward STP BPDUs. These loop protection frames should be forwarded.

Let’s take a quick look at the configuration and operation on my lab switch, an HP 2910al-24G Procurve switch, running W.15.08.0012. The default configuration is for loop-protection to be disabled:

In my lab, I’ve run a cable between ports 21 and 22, so we can simulate a loop. Currently both ports are shut down. Spanning-tree is disabled on this switch, so if I enable those ports, we’ve got a loop, and things will get messy. Let’s configure loop protection, and then enable the ports:

sw01pi# conf t
sw01pi(config)# loop-protect
disable-timer Specify the number of seconds to wait before re-enabling
a disabled port.The default is 0, which will prevent
automatically re-enabling the port
[ethernet] PORT-LIST Specify the ports that are to be added to/removed from
loop protection.
transmit-interval Set time between packet transmissions.
trap Specify loop protection traps that are to be
enabled/disabled.
sw01pi(config)# loop-protect 21-22
sw01pi(config)# loop-protect trap loop-detected
sw01pi(config)# interface 21-22
sw01pi(eth-21-22)# enable

Pretty simple hey? One of the ports has been shut down, as expected. It has been logged, and an SNMP trap (OID: 1.3.6.1.4.1.11.2.14.11.5.1.12.1.5.6.1) has been generated. We’ve got the “Port Disable Timer” at the default of “Disabled” – this means that the port will stay shut down until we take manual action. We’d like it to re-enable after 10s, so we configure this:

sw01pi(config)# loop-protect disable-timer 10

Now if we keep an eye on the output of show loop-protect we can see the Loop Count incrementing, as the port gets re-enabled, detects a loop, and shuts down again:

So now you can set a disable timer, and once users remove the loop, their network ports will come back up, without needing any input from the local network admin. All up, this is an easy feature to configure, and should be used on all edge ports on Procurve switches.

Set the Room calendar to show ‘limited details’ by default

We will do this using the Set-MailboxFolderPermission command. Click the link to see the full list of parameters you can pass in to the command. We will be using ‘limited details’ for the AccessRights variable.

*The installation takes a couple of minutes to complete, but is fully automated and includes all the prerequisite components such as MongoDB and OpenJDK Java 7.

Disable the default MongoDB database instance, using the following commands:

echo 'ENABLE_MONGODB=no' | sudo tee -a /etc/mongodb.conf > /dev/null

Without making this small configuration change, you will have two separate instances of MongoDB running; an unused default database instance, and the UniFi database instance. This is obviously not desirable on a device with limited resources, such as the Raspberry Pi.

Update to the latest release of the Snappy Java Library, using the following commands:

5. That’s all the ‘user’ mailboxes, but your source database server may have system mailboxes in it. These will be either Arbitration mailboxes, or Archive Mailboxes (or both). I don’t have any archive mailboxes, but I do have Arbitration mailboxes. To find out for your databases, use the following commands;

Get-Mailbox -Database “Source Database Name” -Arbitration

Get-Mailbox -Database “Source Database Name” -Archive

6. To move Arbitration and Archive mailboxes, use the following commands;

How to Create a Master Installation Flash Drive with Multiple Versions of Windows

You’ve got your collection of Windows ISOs and maybe you’ve burned installation DVDs or flash drives for them. But why not make yourself a master installation drive that you can use to install any version of Windows?

Setting up a bootable USB Drive that includes multiple ISOs is actually pretty easy, We’re going to do it using a clever little free tool named WinSetupFromUSB, so go ahead and download the latest version of that. You can even include some non-windows ISOs on the disk, like Linux distributions and antivirus rescue disks. For a complete list of what you can include on your USB drive, check out their supported sources page. There is one important note from that page worth calling out. The tool works with single Windows ISOs from Microsoft. If you have a dual ISO that includes both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows, you won’t be able to use it. But you can always download single ISOs (one for 32-bit and one for 64-bit) and stick them both on the USB if you need to.

Next, make sure you have blank USB drive big enough to hold all the ISOs you want to install, along with a little extra space. A 16 GB drive should give you enough space for two or three versions of Windows. If you have a 32 GB drive, you should be able to fit all the versions of Windows you could want. If you want to include other ISOs as well, you might need a bigger drive.

WinSetupFromUSB is a portable tool, so there’s no installation. Once you have it downloaded, double-click the archive to extract the files a new folder. If you’re running a 64-bit version of Windows, run the executable with “x64” in the name. If you’re running a 32-bit version of Windows, run the file without the “x64” in the name.

If you already had your USB drive inserted when you launched the tool, it should be listed in the box at the top of the window. If you didn’t have it inserted already, go ahead and plug it in now and then click Refresh.

Next, click the “Advanced Options” check box.

Instead of working like a regular check box, clicking it opens an “Advanced Options” dialog box. In the Advanced Options dialog, select the “Custom menu names for Vista/7/8/10/Server Source” check box. This setting allows you to provide your own names for the folders in which the Windows ISOs are stored and the boot menu names you see when you start a computer using the USB drive. You can close the “Advanced options” dialog when you’re done.

Now comes the somewhat tricky part. You’ll be adding Windows versions one at a time. The first time you add something to the USB drive (and only the first time), you’ll want to make sure that the “Auto format it with FBinst” check box is selected. This lets WinSetupFromUSB format the drive appropriately for booting. If you know you’ll be booting a computer in UEFI mode (or if you’re unsure), then select the “FAT32” option. Otherwise, you can use the “NTFS” option.

Next, select your first Windows ISO. Select the check box next to the “Windows Vista / 7 / 8 / 10 /Server 2008/2012 based ISO” section and then click the browse button (“…”) to its right. Locate and open the ISO you want to add.

If it’s a large ISO and you’re using the FAT32 file system, you may get a notification that the file is too large and will be split in two. That’s fine, so go ahead and click OK.

Double-check that you have the correct USB drive selected at the top of the window and that the right ISO is shown in the box. Then, click “GO.”

If you’re using a large USB drive, you may get a warning asking if you’re sure that’s the drive you want to use. Go ahead and click “Yes.”

If the auto format option is enabled (and it should be for the first ISO you add to a disk), you’ll also get a warning letting you know that the drive will be formatted and anything on it will be erased. Click “Yes” to continue.

WinSetupFromUSB will now format the drive and then pop up a window where you can enter a custom folder name for the ISO that’s between 1 and 7 characters. If you don’t type anything for 30 seconds, the default will be used automatically.

A similar window will now open that lets you type a custom name that should appear in the boot menu. This time, the name can be between 5 and 35 characters, so you have a bit more room to be specific. And again, you have 30 seconds to type a new name before the default is used automatically.

At this point, WinSetupFromUSB will begin creating folders, adding the ISO to your USB drive, and adding the options to the boot menu. This can take several minutes and you can gauge the progress in the window’s status bar.

WinSetupFromUSB now returns you to the main window. You can exit the program or you can continue adding additional ISOs to your boot disk. You’ll add additional ISOs using the same process, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind as you do it:

When you add additional ISOs to an existing boot disk, make sure the “Auto format it with FBinst” check box is not selected. It won’t be by default when you return to the window (or when you start the program again), but it doesn’t hurt to make sure. You only want to format the disk with the very first ISO you add.

You’ll need to click “Advanced Options” and enable the “Custom menu names for Vista/7/8/10/Server Source” check box each time you add a new ISO. Make sure you don’t forget this step before clicking Go or you won’t be able to add a custom name for the ISO to your menu.

But that’s it. Otherwise, just follow the same steps each time you want to add a new ISO to the boot disk. You don’t have to add them all in one session either. You can come back any time and add something new. When you’re done, you can boot up a computer using your USB drive (which you may be able to do even if your BIOS won’t let you) and be rewarded with a nice boot menu like this:

While it doesn’t sport the most intuitive interface, WinSetupFromUSB is lightweight and works well. And once you get the hang of adding ISOs to the package, it’s a breeze to set yourself up with a powerful boot disk that will let you install whatever version of Windows you want, as well as a number of other bootable tools.

The DPI settings are the settings that enables you to change the size of all fonts and other UI elements on the computer. But unfortunately, by default, you don’t get to change it through a remote desktop session that runs on a Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 computer. They are grayed out, like below.

You may want to ask why we need it to change the font size on a remote session. Believe me, when you use a laptop or tablet that runs on a very high resolution like Surface Pro 3, you will need a larger font on a remote desktop session. Otherwise, the font will be too small to read on the screen.